>> Can't let you Yanks take credit for *everything*, now, can we? <<

Aardwolfe,

I wasn't. No doubt you are correct. As I'm sure you know, the coldest region in North America, commonly refered to as the "cold triangle", is described by drawing imaginary lines between two points in Alaska and one point in Canada. I didn't write that I was at the specific coldest dot on the continent; merely that I spent a fair bit of time inside that region. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Frankly, I don't have a clue what the specific lowest temperature ever recorded in North America was, or which side of the border. I do know that my fan belts shattered more than once when cranking over my cold-soaked truck - usually accompanied by 2 or more flats due to the shrinkage of the steel rim away from the bead of the tires.

The coldest I have personally been in where the temp was recorded by precise instruments was -69 deg F with god-knows-what windchill (not much wind; I don't remember the velocity, but there was some). Temps continuously in the -50s for 1 - 3 weeks of the year were de rigour, of course. The coldest temp I know I've been in with significant winds was -58 and it was darned cold. None of those temps were at any significant elevation above MSL (perhaps 1,500 ft?). A temperature lapse of about 5 deg F per 1,000 ft is tossed around, but any big rock up there makes its own weather anyway, so... anything below -40 is cold, anyway.

Most of the winter, except for the wind, was like most places in the interior of Canada and Alaska, with temps staying somewhere in the -20F to -40F range (and an occasional Chinook to mess things up by bringing temps way up to +10 or even +30). But there are relatively few permanently instrumented sites in that region, so who knows what the temp may be at some deep frozen pothole lake lost in the black spruce and hidden from the sun all year? We had 4 seasons there: June, July, August, and winter. It is reportedly the region of the world with the greatest annual temperature spread - it hit over 90F for a day or so nearly every year in late June or early July. It would not surprise me, though, to hear that somewhere in northern Asia or Europe experiences the same extremes. In any event, I loved that place!

Can't tell which country you're in in that region unless you're on the highway near a roadsign.

If you say Canada had the coldest spot, I'm certainly not going to disagree with you!

Tom